Statement: There were so many events going on. Most of which I only observed and didn’t dare take part in. My handicaps made me an easy target, and only the crowd’s dim herd mentality kept them moving toward an end. Yet, there were a few, like myself, who woke up to see the world for what it was. We each found ways to earn small amounts of money.

I’ve hinted enough at the reason. I’ve shown you many of the pieces by which people could get ahead—yet there were a hundred other keywords, secret methods, and possible routes through the course. People skipped up in the line, some shared secrets or tips, others bribed people to switch spots, and some outright whored themselves as a way to get ahead. Some, filth that they were, sold their children. The ladies with sharp teeth smiled all the while…

My hands gripped wrong on the side of the crutch. It hurt. My arms screamed. My hip joined to form a chorus of pain. It didn’t matter, stopping wasn’t an option. If I accepted the premise that this had always been real, then I couldn’t afford to lose my wits.

By God, one I’d questioned my faith in since the accident, everything oozed wildly with pain. Each step took more effort than the last. Aches plagued me with each shallow breath.

I made it through three flights of stairs to the shopping center I’d seen while drinking water. There was a long line of mall-style store fronts. They were closing, and I had no clue how far the rows of shops went. I did know that somehow they were the point we’d been building to.

The choices were to quit, to die, to sleep no more, or to risk it all by finding a shop. I had to bet it on going into one of these stores to get something worthwhile for this hell. There were no other ways for me to survive.

A dozen shops were nearby but most were boarded up. What they contained was beyond me. I couldn’t even read their names. Signs hung in the door but probably said ‘closed.’ If the vending machines, stewardesses, and money were any indication, nothing in this place was truly like normal reality. I continued to attempt rationalization but hunger and pain didn’t help.

I struggled to reach an open location. Having money and spending it in these stores had to be part of the goal; part of the prizes alluded to earlier. I knew for certain that the two were related. The knowledge haunted a portion of my rear brain in the same manner voices chanted ‘obey the rules’ or ‘ignore the rules.’

The reasons didn’t matter. Behind me the wall of blackness signaling a bad end approached. I’d fallen so far behind due to limping along and pain. There had been others moving slower than me, but they were lost, gone, quitters, or something else.

Ahead, a woman with a large overburdened stroller struggled to make it to a nearby store. I blanched upon putting her heavyset features and endless snot filled coughs together. This older woman was the same one from my bus. She had been the only person I recognized.

“Hey,” the woman shouted as I crutched past. “Help me.”

I said nothing. My chest and body hurt too much.

“Hey!” She coughed wetly.

My steps faltered as all the considerations possible flickered through. I wondered about the truth of this place. I halted, steadied myself, and checked the card’s balance. It sat safely inside a jacket pocket and registered eight hundred and seven dollars. I had no way to measure this total against anyone else’s.

“Push me,” she demanded.

I spun slowly. In a row sat me, nearing the end of the stores, her, and the looming wall of rust and black. It swirled and letters formed above it along the mall’s ceiling. ‘E-X-I-T’ they read. It did not look friendly or blue. The meaning of those colors was beyond me but the darkness made my chest tighten even more.

“You, I’ll sell you a pain pill. I have my pills. Those little shits tried to steal them but—” The old woman coughed violently. Her body must be in worse shape than mine.

Her mind was clear. Large, flabby arms rested upon the stroller’s front end. Like me, she touched a harder metal. That, along with the keys in that scrapper’s hands clearly meant heavier elements helped. I didn’t know if it was iron, or anything else put into the object.

“No,” I said.

“I can’t go on…” she said. Her body slowed to a stop. “I never could make it. I should have quit from the start. Like that asshole bus driver said. God help me, I’ll be free of this hell at last. It’s sick. This place is twisted and disgusting.”

I nodded. During my awareness I’d seen more than anyone should. Most of it was lost under a haze but there were lingering memories that spoke of disgusting atrocities. People doing immoral acts simply to get fake money. Some ganged up and threw others into the exits and we split money. Those ladies always showed up as the crowd turned on me. I questioned it, but felt perversely relieved at not being the target.

Post Note: It seems strange, looking back, that I was so compartmentalized. This has not gone away, and I worry that perhaps I’d been broken from the very beginning. The accident had shaken me from a close call with death, and I couldn’t see the world in the same manner.

Muscles on the old woman’s shoulders and legs sagged. She fell onto her knees with a sickening crunch. She turned slightly to see the wall. As she twisted, I could see the clouded look overtaking her eyes. The wall approached.

My eyes widened and head shook. It was one thing to watch a person go into the wall of their own volition, but quite another to see someone so feeble they couldn’t keep up. I watched as the black wall swallowed her. Even clouded by this place, she had enough awareness to scream; a hoarse wet sound devolved into short sobs then cut off. My heart seized for two beats in sheer terror. All that remained was the packed stroller’s outline. It lingered for a few seconds before the wall moved forward another foot.

The wall had eaten her, as those exits had taken so many others. This was about survival of the fittest, a category I didn’t belong to. But I didn’t want to fall to the ground screaming in terror as unseen forces had their way.

My arms were raw. A trail of blood dripped down, mixed with sweat. My grip faltered over and over, making focusing even harder. I thought about letting myself be swallowed by the darkness more than once in the span of a minute. Every few seconds I’d hear another scream from one of the clouded figures who walked in the wrong direction.

It was horrible of me, but their dying screams kept me moving.

Another store closed as I approached. A minute later, another store with sliding doors shut in my face. The doors laughed. At a third spot I walked up to a supremely tall woman with sharp ears locked the entrance. She mouthed unheard words at me then pointed behind me. Options were running out.

“Last chance to shop for prizes,” a woman said. “Big blowout sale! All half items for half off!”

She waved a giant sign. Next to her three children jumped wildly. They too had signs, colored badly with misspelled words. I couldn’t pause to study the youngsters but in the haze were a dozen different snapshots explaining what happened. Thinking on the horrible exchanges of parents selling their children, or parents falling behind, or those who were abandoned by exiting caretakers, each instance somehow helped me keep going. Every person who died meant I had survived.

I faded in and out. My stomach growled repeatedly and finally settled on twisting into a knot while I was between a high end boutique and a vending machine. I didn’t have time to stop for food.

Everything hurt. The woman’s screams lingered. Other people milled around, some utterly vacant looking, others with the same urgent desperation I had. As if they expected to find a better deal in the twilight hour of this event.

I remembered the stewardess’s words. She said, “There are benefits to waiting,” with a sinister grin.

Still, being crippled and slow led to a half off sale, which made as much sense as anything in this strange place. Additionally, I had no clue what they were selling, or if one shop might be better than the other. Most of the better dressed locations had shut down, clearly out of business or emptied of their stock. The remaining few were worse than homeless shelters or dirty yard sales.

Yet, I had no choice besides the terrible store on the left. The wall of darkness was too close. I hobbled over, grunting and wheezing with each step. As I passed, the stewardess trio tittered to each other. The little kids joined in a few seconds later, laughing mockingly.

Post Note: If only I’d known then what I know now. The children would live, but their fates were no kinder than mine—only different. My brother would pray to God, while I can only reconcile myself with the knowledge of my own limitations. They were beyond me, as had been the old woman, as so many others will be.

“Good luck, stray Underwood,” one of the green eyed women said between laughs.

“You can do it!” A little girl cheered me on. The trio of sharp toothed women laughed even louder.

A heavy door sat in my way. I stabbed at it with a crutch and leaned in, using the supporting item as a pry bar. It hurt, but everything did at this point. The door fought me with every inch. I took rapid shallow breaths.

“Go! Go, man, go!” they cheered in rough voices that sounded less human with each cheer. What’s more, the tiny children’s voices also distorted.

The wall of darkness I’d been staying ahead of, at least until this shopping mall style strip, passed by them. The children were still cheering as their forms faded away. They didn’t scream. I did not understand what to make of such a fact.

Onward approached the wall; creeping closer while shapes twisted around behind its solid barrier. I took one more deep breath and heaved on my crutch. The door popped open and my makeshift pry bar spun out of control. I fumbled after it then managed to get a foot in the door and crawled backward through it.

I rocked with pain but kept quiet. My lip hurt from being bit. There were no more drugs left to flood through me. A rush hit my head as the world spun. Everything faded in and out. I struggled to keep moving but couldn’t.

“No sleeping in my store!” a gruff voice shouted. “Healing potions are twenty deers. If you accept, show me your card.”

My eyes opened from a brief, but greatly desired slumber. Above me was a large mass of curly hair with bird feathers lodged in weird spots.

“Okay,” I responded and fumbled for my card. Each motion caused me to quiver uncontrollably. The man grunted, bent over, and farted, all in the same motion. Rough fingers grabbed my arm.

“Deal made.”

Liquid fell on my head and body. Pain faded and I gasped. Itching took the place of the agony that should have put me down hours ago. I shook violently, twitching on the ground as whatever he doused me with changed. I huffed repeatedly and tugged at my shirt. There were no obvious wounds and even some of my scarring had been cleaned away.

I sagged in confused relief and looked around. The store’s inside was ragged. Pop-up tables were littered by dirty items. Pieces of junk lay in clumps and each one had a price tag in bright letters. What they meant, I didn’t know. The letters were difficult to decipher. I stared at one hanging near my head until my thoughts fuzzed.

Next was the door. I jerked to the side, causing myself to wince, and checked if the wall of darkness could come inside. It slid by calmly, covering the door’s front with an evil red. The storefront stayed close. I winced as lingering but far less debilitating pain registered. My fingers were slick with blood but there was no sign of where I’d been bleeding from.

“No more potions. I sold the last one to the gimp on the floor,” the same gruff voice from before rumbled.

I felt around for the remaining crutch out of habit, found it, and slowly stood. It hurt far less than expected. My clothes were a sopping mess. Liquid dripped upon the floor, mixing blood, sweat, and whatever I’d been doused with.

“What?” a thinner woman said. “Fine. Sell me the other bundle of furs.”

While they talked, I pulled off my shoe. The portion of my foot lost in the car wreck had changed. A huge chunk was still missing in action, but it’d regrown slightly. That potion had undone damage I’d thought to irreversible.

I turned back to stare at the shop keeper.

He had years on him. His beard was salted with gray but thick and long. He thin eyes flickered around the room, glaring at each person as if they were worthless. I got the impression that he didn’t want to be involved in this nonsense, being whatever we were all part of.

“You done?” He burped at the woman.

She tilted her nose up and nodded. Bundles of white furs were under her arms.

“Off you go then, wench. The exits right over there.” He snorted and scratched under an arm. He had no sleeves on his shirt, leaving us all with an unobstructed view of lice infested armpit hair.

The woman’s face drew back in revulsion, and she went, unhesitatingly, to the exit. I ignored my surroundings and established this had all been leading to a series of stores. Maybe there was more, I couldn’t properly predict the reason for all this insanity. It couldn’t be as simple as kidnapping a bunch of people, killing a ton of them, exchanging money to others then giving us prizes. But that made no goddamn sense either.

As for the blue exit letters, that must have been the destination mentioned by those stewardesses at the beginning. This was my first chance to spend money and maybe the last since that wall of darkness blocked the doorway.

I stumbled around, still putting weight on the crutch, and studied the tables of offerings. There were wrappers, broken clocks, mirrors, and broken hammers. Each item did something useful but what, exactly, couldn’t be inferred. A mirror simply reflected people, at least in the normal world. But this was a place where dollar bills turned into ashes and vending machines devoured people who shook them. For all I knew a mirror here would trap my soul.

My thoughts were still disoriented. The drugs were completely gone and lingering damage filled in the blank spaces. That healing liquid hadn’t completely healed me, but it sure made a difference. I felt better than I had in months. Of course, that didn’t account for the current strange fantasy land situation.

I picked up three watches that reminded me of fake Rolexes. There were sixteen books with covers full of gibberish. Alien languages were merged with hieroglyphics and resulted in nonsense. Even the tags having prices on them had been an educated guess.

“I can’t read these,” I admitted.

The spot under my armpit reopened with too much pressure. A chill chased down my side with each drop of blood mixed sweat. Skin around the proprietor’s eye sockets tightened and a cheek bunched in anger as my blood trickled onto the floor.

“I can’t read these,” I repeated.

“Not my problem.” The old man grumped. He crossed thick arms over a larger chest and snorted loudly. “Buy or don’t. Then get out of my store. Take your bleeding somewhere else. You won’t find bandages here. I don’t deal with menders and I’m out of healing potions. Besides, menders got no spines.”

“I want to buy stuff. I have money.”

“Sure you do,” he said.

A creaking noise made me turn around again. I worried that the door might be opening or the wall encroaching. Instead, one of the two other people in the store that had been absentmindedly staring at a table, was bent over picking their junk up off the floor.

No, I corrected myself, he was sobbing. The man wrung his hands together and rocked over a book binding with pages spilled everywhere.

“I need the pages,” he mumbled.

“Come on, man, buy or get out!” the shop owner bellowed. The man shook his head, grabbed all the pages, and exchanged his money for a broken half-book.

It was sad.

“Want the book binding? Seventy five percent off. Or whatever you call a quarter. Stupid people can’t make up their minds. Percentages, it’s like you’re damn Greeks. I hate Greeks.”

Being healed by that odd liquid helped my mind put together pieces. Being safe from the wall of darkness helped as well. The biggest issue left was making the best of this situation. I suspected the door nearby was one way and that we’d never get deals like this again. Sadly, I had been left with a terrible pile of leftovers.

“I’m not Greek. I have money, but I don’t know what to buy.” I rubbed my face and checked the knick knacks on the table. Each item resembled garbage from a landfill. “How much does an explanation cost?”

He smiled. It was disgusting. I refuse to describe more.

“An explanation of what?”

“The rules. There’s always rules,” I said with false certainty. “There has to be something.”

“Ten deers,” he responded.

We agreed, he touched the debit card, and my number on it’s lettering dropped accordingly.

“There are rules. And the price is higher than you can afford. Pay attention and practice, maybe you’ll learn some of them.” The man’s face brightened and his eyes grew larger, but stayed pitch black. “Maybe you’ll be the one to learn them all! The secret king! Ha.”

“How about the items?”

“Bah.” He grumped and both cheeks lifted until they seemed to be the only feature left. I took a breath and struggled not to gape at the distorted face. “You tell me what you want. I’ll tell you what you need.”

“I need to survive whatever happens next.”

He paused, glanced up and down then started laughing louder and ruder than a gaggle of children and three stewardesses had managed. He strode around the room and picked up a broken mirror, a necklace with a chipped dagger decoration, and a pile of goo in a box. It all looked like trash. He yanked away my crutch and slammed it onto the table top.

I gasped then quickly propped myself up. He’d taken my support after I’d asked for something to survive.

“That’s two hundred for the changeling orb, three fifty for the star mirror, and another two hundred for the knife point pendant. Plus an assembly fee of sixty. ”

“What about the sale?”

“That is the sale. Last girl in her, spent eighteen hundred for less. Supply and demand. No more demand. So you get a deal. The best package for the last man standing.” His face brightened and nubby eyes rose. The man’s belly jiggled wildly as he laughed.

“Why my crutch? Why didn’t you use a glove?”

“Mortals.” He spit on the ground. I studied the pile of items. He scratched his dry scalp. “Blood bound iron can add properties to the craft. Personalize it. Plus it makes it easier. Them other, ladies, hate iron, but not me. I love the stuff. It’s hard to find otherwise I’d haggle more. Plus shop’s closing in five of those minute things.”

I blinked, and pulled my jacket pocket out to look at the card again. There was enough to pay for those items, but I had no idea what assembling did, or anything else. Too many different aspects to this entire nightmare made no sense. Five minutes to reach the exit gave me little room to argue.

He could be raking me over the coals. He could be lying about the price. My face tensed and shoulders bunched. Lingering pain, resurfacing after the potion, threatened to drag me down. Muscles in my stomach bound tightly.

“Deal,” I said and licked dry lips. He rubbed finger and thumb together and I took the hint by pulling out my card. Soon I was down to thirty two dollars.

The man grunted. He opened the empty binding and put in the changeling orb. The book closed and light flared. This same action was repeated with every single item. Sweat dripped down the man’s face.

There were no clocks to tell me how long it took. Whatever he was doing added pages to the book. None of that made sense. He moved onto the crutch next, folding it into the book somehow. His shoulders tensed and the man grunted like a mating pig.

My crutch’s soft pads were tossed to the side. He picked up the book and picked his nose with the free hand.

“Here you go.” He handed over the book, which had completely transformed from its earlier sad appearance. It looked, clean. Cleaner than the entire store. Clearer than a toilet after my father made me clean it three times.

In my hands was a smooth polished mirror topped book which reflected only darkness. The pages inside were reflective as well. They had the same dark sheen as the cover. I tilted it around but nothing made sense.

“One minute until closing. Then you won’t want to be here. Not skinned in that. Unless you’re planning on taking the easy way out. That’d be a damn shame after all the work I put in.”

He hadn’t done a damned thing other than touch the objects to each other and disgustingly grunt. Folding the crutch into chunks had be impressive and the laws of physics clearly were being abused, but that fit perfectly fine with this strange world.

Still, my hands shook from hunger and thirst. Pain in my bladder echoed wildly, threatening to let loose here on the floor. I couldn’t handle all these problems anymore and no longer had either crutch. Everything about this situation felt alien. It was time to escape or find a hole to hide in.

“Thank you. I think.”

“Bah. You’re lucky you thanked an Underkin and not one of the Wildchilds. Else you’d owe me more than a favor.”

“Okay,” I said. His words made no sense.

“Good. You’re not too stupid. Keep paying attention. Now, take a business card, and take your sadly hairless chin out of here.” He waved me toward the exit.

Three wet cards were on the counter. I tucked one into my pocket with the debt card. I spared the short man one more glance. He snorted and wrinkled his large nose. A grin split his face, but his teeth were flat. Black eyes, flat teeth; green and yellow eyes, sharp teeth. Different hair styles. Nothing about this madness made sense.

With the small book in hand, I stumbled through the exit and prayed to God that I wouldn’t end up screaming. There’s nothing like stepping into the unknown to bring out fading faith.